Concept YUS (Cross-World Murder Cases Book 1) Page 18

  I passed those grotesque replicas of human objects, haunted by the thought that somewhere else—on the planet Yus, on Eyrena, or even on Earth—other depositories were probably filled with similarly grotesque caricatures of our plants and animals.

  I froze as if paralyzed, my hair standing on end. Not only plants and animals. Not only! On the floor at my feet lay a human hand.

  I stiffly leaned over it: bluish fingers bent as if to grip something, no fingernails, severed violently just above the wrist—but hollow inside! I felt momentary relief before horror took hold of me again. Maybe it was a cast? A Yusian cast of someone’s real human hand? A small, female…

  Leaning closer, I noticed many dotted lines glistening on the wrinkled skin-like material. They were actually moving in tight, parallel rows, equidistant from each other. They looked like intelligent insects, hurrying to inspect every millimeter of this “hand,” memorizing it.

  I left the depository certain that this discovery, which had shaken me so much, wouldn’t be my last. I entered a tall, winding tunnel. From its arc hung huge draperies of some thick, gelatinous substance, cutting through the dimness with streams of unearthly, splendid colors of amazingly vivid intensity—yellow, scarlet, violet, and blue. As I passed beneath, they seemed to tremble with excitement, as if they were warning me of something evil and cruel.

  A human! I jumped aside, instinctively drawing the flexor from its holster. Whatever it was stood still as a statue in its narrow alcove, dimly glowing. It didn’t move even when I pointed the flexor in its direction. Much shorter than I, it was deformed and completely wrapped in those glistening dotted lines. The right arm was missing. I pushed it—it swayed but didn’t fall. It also maintained its balance when I deliberately tried to knock it down. Although it was lightweight and probably hollow, some force kept it upright.

  I continued on through the tunnel, the flexor set at maximum in my hand. I passed by several other alcoves recesses with similar “mannequins” and then heard the same prolonged moan. It was closer, maybe just around the next turn.

  I ran toward the sound, holding my breath, and peered forward. About ten meters away from me was the next alcove, and inside it the glistening dotted lines were crawling all over a mannequin. This one wasn’t still at all. So it was true—they were already producing pseudohumans!

  I watched horrified. He, or rather it—the creature—was trembling, shaking as if in painful convulsions, its breath a weak, uneven wheezing. I had to do something immediately. But what?

  The creature noticed me. It briskly raised its hands above its head, and I heard the sound of tearing tissue. Then, after bending over and picking something up from the floor, it started running down the winding tunnel. I rushed after it and was no more than five or six steps behind when it turned around. It was holding a flexor! Illuminated by a scarlet stream from one of the low-hanging draperies, it looked insanely alien—and strangely familiar. My flexor was ready to fire, but I didn’t use it. I stepped back.

  At that moment, the creature fired. Upward, at the drapery. The gelatinous substance, weighing at least a couple of tons, plopped in front of me and began twisting and crawling, blocking my way. I stared at it for some time before I thought to walk around it. Careful not to step on what looked now like a huge puddle of blood, I then resumed my chase of the fleeing creature. It could no longer run fast; apparently it was completely exhausted. The distance between us diminished. I had almost reached it when it unexpectedly disappeared through a side entrance. I cautiously looked in and saw it rambling among piles of pulsing “ceramic” jars. As I approached, it again fired its flexor.

  The jar next to me exploded. The shock wave threw me backward into a cloud of microscopic brown flakes. I choked and started spitting as they melted in my mouth, leaving an unbearably sour taste. Crawling away from them, I looked around and saw the creature go back into the tunnel.

  I followed through the haze. Feeling dizzy, I stumbled and almost fell into a pool filled with thick, translucent mush in which randomly floated inflated imitations of car tires. The pool was rumbling and roiling, as if swamp bubbles were bursting beneath its surface.

  I looked down at the floating junkyard, wondering what would have become of me if I had fallen in. Then I continued down the tunnel, my hand overheated from squeezing the flexor so hard for so long. I sensed that something was ugly, even brutish, about this chase, but despite these misgivings, I had to continue it. I wasn’t sent to Eyrena just to give in to squeamish inhibitions.

  When the tunnel turned again, I caught a glimpse of the weird, half-alien, half-familiar creature as it leaned against a wall, trying to regain its strength. I didn’t give it the chance. Rushing toward it, I took shelter from its flexor in one alcove after another, ignoring the hollow figures each contained.

  The creature dragged its weak feet forward. Suddenly, an ancient, entirely human passion for victory stirred in me. I wasn’t concerned with the reason for the chase anymore; I didn’t care what that creature was or what it felt at the moment. All I wanted was to catch it. Its stubborn refusal to surrender maddened me.

  As I leaped from the last sheltering alcove, it turned around and stopped. We were so close that I could see the bulging folds that encircled its body like rings, the steaming exhalations from its invisible nostrils and the nervous twitching of its limbs. As it lifted the barrel of its flexor, I dived toward the wall. Where I had been standing a fraction of a second earlier was buried under another ton or so of drapery ripped from the arc. I walked between its poisonously green edges and the wall. Nearby, the creature was backing away, swaying and nearly collapsing. Apparently the end was near. I walked toward it, my flexor aimed straight at its chest.

  Exhausted, unable to take a single step further, it stood still, shaken by a new fit of spasms or maybe fear. In this state, it couldn’t hit me if it tried, so I advanced until we were about fifteen meters apart. Ten. Then the creature chose an easier target, again aiming, surprisingly fast, for the drapery above me.

  Now I didn’t have time to jump away. I pulled the trigger. At that instant came the familiar ugly sound of tearing. The drapery plopped on the floor around me, encircling me—without touching me!

  It didn’t want to kill me, I slowly realized. It was only trying to stop me. I remembered the gates opening in front of Chuks in the starship. “Deprived of toleration of intelligent touch,” he had said. Not even the Yusian “draperies” could tolerate such a touch.

  The creature was lying on its back with arms outstretched, its face staring at the arc, bluish and shining in the twilight. The nose was almost flat, and it was without ears or hair. I leaned over it. Its head raised wearily, as if it wanted to speak and then dropped to the floor. It stopped moving.

  The beam hole in its chest was already healing through accelerated division of the surrounding cells, and the blood that had run out of the hole was soaking into the skin-like tissue swelling around it. It felt oily and hot. I pulled and stretched the tissue above its right foot, which turned out to be thick but very elastic. When I pulled it harder, on its surface appeared a small crack. The substance beneath was matte white. I widened the crack—and to my amazement, a human knee appeared! Female. I tore with trembling hands at the deceitful mask of a face, ripping it off.

  Wide open, the dead eyes of Odesta Gomez stared at me.

  I was able to keep my face completely expressionless. I stood up and headed for the alcove in which I had found her. There were her shoes and clothes, carefully folded into a small pile. I took them and returned to the corpse. Separating the Yusian cover from her body, I threw it aside, where the torn cracks quickly healed. The skin-like tissue started to bloat, taking the shape of the body it had been covering. After that it formed the ringlike folds and swellings, altering the original shape. The neck merged with the shoulders, the waist spread level with the chest and the hips, the arms and legs lost their outlines at the wrists and the ankles.

  In front of me, moved by shar
p structural impulses, stood another twisted mannequin that only vaguely resembled Odesta. Its “dotted lines” had faded but never ceased their inspections, moving to and fro in tight, dense rows.

  I carefully closed the eyes of the woman I had killed and then clumsily began to dress her. I wanted to finish this depressing procedure as quickly as I could, but I forced myself to move slowly and calmly. I knew that the Yusians were watching me.

  Chapter 21

  We were gathered around the corpse of Odesta Gomez. But we were not looking at her; we were staring at each other.

  “The wound was made by a flexor,” Elia said, “but her clothes are untouched.”

  “How?” Vernie whispered. “How could they be ‘untouched’?”

  “She must have been naked when they killed her.”

  “What about these?” Larsen pointed at the two blue spots on her temples. “Did you find out what caused them?”

  “No.” Elia shook her head.

  “We’ll examine them in the biolaboratory,” Reder cut in. “At the moment, our only concern is to determine the cause of death.”

  “When—did this happen?” Vernie whispered once again.

  Reder answered him loudly, emphasizing his words, “During the last eighteen hours. That means, between when she met with you, Vernie, and when the activity in the forest subsided, at noon today.”

  “It’s impossible to determine it more precisely.” Elia turned to Larsen. “The process of—preservation or perhaps mummification, I have no idea what process—has already started!”

  “Don’t forget that I wasn’t the last to see her yesterday. One of the robots saw her after me,” Vernie reminded us. “And her body was found today by a robot. Ask yourselves why, instead of staying with her in the forest and just calling us for help, that robot dragged her here, onto the road. He did so without any orders, without even permission to touch her!”

  “No, we’re not forgetting,” Reder muttered sarcastically. “We will forget nothing. And we will ask ourselves about many other things as well.”

  Larsen lifted the dead woman, fixing his eyes upon every one of us in turn in unspoken threat. Then he slowly started walking toward the base. His wide back was bent, and his walk a study in deep-rooted weariness and grief. We followed him.

  “I’ve seen those spots before,” Vernie spoke so quietly that I guessed rather than really heard his words.

  “Where?” I asked.

  He held me back until the others passed ahead of us.

  “In the same place.” He became more specific. “On her temples.”

  “When?”

  “About two weeks ago. In other words, only three days after Fowler and Stein died.”

  “What do you think they’re from?”

  “The spots? Well—I don’t know.” Vernie made a grimace that told me he did know. “But maybe you will find out. I’ll only say that Odesta was desperately trying to hide them.”

  “Then how did you see them?”

  “She fainted. So, while I was trying to bring her to her senses—”

  “Why did she faint?”

  “That’s another thing I don’t know—at least not now. I thought then the reason was weariness. We always have our reasons not to feel fresh here.”

  “What did she tell you when she regained consciousness?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t question her. And I don’t intend to mention the incident to the others. The only one who will ever know about this is you.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh! Can’t you guess?”

  “No.”

  “It’s easy, Inspector. I have no desire to bring flexor trouble upon myself. For all we know, one of those three”—Vernie tilted his head toward Larsen, Elia, and Reder ahead of us—“could be the murderer. Right?”

  We reached the lodge. The others continued on toward the laboratories, but I returned to my apartment. After three hours of carrying Odesta’s corpse to the forest, and after the twelve hours that we all “searched” for her, I needed to be alone, to put it all behind me. I was at, or actually someone had led me to, the edge of total failure. Driven to the brink, but by whom? And why?

  Generally speaking, I knew the answers to such questions because the powers responsible for the Eyrena base were certainly no secret to me. They were the same powers responsible for regulating Yusian contact on Earth: the Security Council, the United Military Forces, and the International Bureau of Investigation.

  Three independent organizations, represented on Eyrena respectively by Zung’s agent, Larsen and myself. The superior power here belonged to Zung: those assigned to the base were actually working according to his plans for colonization. I therefore assumed that the murders of Fowler and Stein must be the work of someone who opposed their attitudes toward those plans: plans in which, by the way, Odesta could not be involved in any possible way.

  So yesterday Zung’s agent—Reder of course—must have known that she would be visiting the Yusian base again. He decided to arrange my “encounter” with her, and Elia helped him, either consciously or unconsciously. What did he want to achieve by this meeting? The humiliating answer is that he almost didn’t care, because all three possible outcomes would work in his favor.

  If I had chosen to expose Odesta, it would have ended her collaboration with the Yusians, something that Zung’s agent wanted anyway. If she had killed me, that would have ended my investigations into the murders committed—or, more his style, provoked—by him. The third outcome, which actually took place, unfortunately provided him with the advantages of the other two as well. More precisely, I helped him by completely eliminating Odesta and, as her murderer, putting myself into his hands.

  That’s why Zung sent me here despite my sincere disagreement not only with his plans but also with the entire idea of the colonization. He knew full well what kind of person was working for him on Eyrena and was certain that this person could find a way to manage me.

  Indeed, Reder was about to justify that trust. He only had to solve one more little problem: how to put the blame on me without revealing his own subversive contribution to the event. Once he succeeded, everything would fall into place: Fowler and Stein find out about Odesta’s connection with the Yusians, and she murders them. The inspector from IBI in turn kills her for the same reason, and that ends the inconvenient investigation and awards a green light to the colonization.

  I went to the safe in the bedroom, unlocked it, and took out the electronic file Odesta had given me. Back in the living room I uploaded the information onto my computer, since I wanted to see if the files had been compromised or changed in any way. They were still intact. The data from the electronic mass spectrometer could not be falsified. Odesta’s alibi was indisputable. Her whereabouts at the time of Fowler and Stein’s murders, at least according to her, were known to only one person: me. That fact now took on great importance, because it was the only argument, but a categorical one, against Reder’s version of these events.

  I logged on to the server and created a new file for the contents of Odesta’s log and then added a command for that data to be sent, in exactly one hundred hours, to all personal computers on the base. I created a password that would allow only my access to the file and logged off.

  I put the original logbook file back in the safe and removed my Yusian effigy from it. I had to find out at all costs what it meant or what it was used for. Probably this answer would provide me with clues as to why Fowler had Stein’s effigy in his clenched fist when he died. I locked the safe again and started to put the effigy in the pocket of my jacket, but something unclear and persistent made me hold it. Made me look at it—look at myself.

  My face lay in my palm facing me, with a bruise beneath my eye, unshaven, and my right ear quite red. But the eyes—the eyes—seemed to be staring at me. And the expression in those eyes. Did I really look like that then—strained, lonely, and frightened? How wrong I was to think I could hide my feelings. Or maybe I could hide them, b
ut this effigy revealed what was hidden behind the mask.

  Suddenly, my breathing started echoing in my own ears—becoming faster, peremptory. Only thirty-three minutes remaining until liftoff! No doubt they were watching me, so I will demonstrate my composure by. But soon, very soon the Earth will be unapproachably far from me. Yes, my workday is over, and the minutes are flying!

  Flying, flying—I began to sink deeper and deeper, caught in their rapid descent. I was wandering the ragged edges of my memory, tenaciously, piece by piece, trying to reconstruct in my soul some feeling or some forgotten event, dead and buried. I finally focused in on one object, surprisingly familiar, prosaic among the chaos of past emotions. On that ineptly painted, clumsy and pretentious, still life. I was standing in front of it, filled with a tragic love for all that is human. Hovering above me I sensed a monstrous, oppressive presence, of something inhuman.

  I was startled out of my reverie by the effigy burning in my palm. It felt soft and malleable, but squeezing it tightly had no effect. It remained as I had been then—the same stubbled face frozen in a grimace of mock indifference, the same haggard, terrified gaze—in those final minutes before the monstrous Yusian starship left Earth.

  I locked it in the safe again. I understood now what it was “used” for—to preserve a memory—a “keepsake,” as Stein used to say about the effigy of himself that he carried.

  I went to the desk and placed my hand on the scarlet Yusian “telephone.” At my touch, it glistened like a smooth ruby, radiating light, and from its core began sprouting threadlike, almost transparent, filaments that intertwined to form a gently trembling insignia: “essiko.”

  Chapter 22